|
What then is there to prevent man having been the object of
planning There?
No: all stands in that likeness, nothing to be added or taken
away; this planning and reasoning is based only on an assumption;
things are taken to be in process and this suggests planning and
reasoning; insist on the eternity of the process and planning
falls to the ground. There can be no planning over the eternal;
that would imply forgetfulness of a first state; further, if the
second state were better, things stood ill at first; if they
stood well, so they must remain.
Only in conjunction with their causes are things good; even in
this sphere a thing is good in virtue of being complete; form
means that the thing is complete, the Matter duly controlled;
this control means that nothing has been left crude; but
something is so left if anything belonging to the shape be
missing-eye, or other part. Thus to state cause is to state the
thing complete. Why eyes or eyebrows? For completion: if you say
"For preservation," you affirm an indwelling safeguard of the
essence, something contributory to the being: the essence, then,
preceded the safeguard and the cause was inbound with the
essence; distinct, this cause is in its nature a part of the
essence.
All parts, thus, exist in regard to each other: the essence is
all-embracing, complete, entire; the excellency is inbound with
the cause and embraced by it; the being, the essence, the cause,
all are one.
But, at this, sense-perception- even in its particular modes- is
involved in the Idea by eternal necessity, in virtue of the
completeness of the Idea; Intellectual-Principle, as
all-inclusive, contains in itself all by which we are brought,
later, to recognise this perfection in its nature; the cause,
There, was one total, all-inclusive; thus Man in the Intellectual
was not purely intellect, sense-perception being an addition made
upon his entry into birth: all this would seem to imply a
tendance in that great Principle towards the lower, towards this
sphere.
But how could that Principle have such perception, be aware of
things of sense? Surely it is untenable on the one hand that
sense-perception should exist There, from eternity, and on the
other that only upon the debasement of the soul should there be
sense-perception here and the accomplishment in this realm of the
Act of what was always a power in that?
|
|